Liquorice is a confectionery flavoured with the extract of the roots of the liquorice plant. A wide variety of liquorice sweets are produced around the world. In North America, liquorice is called black licorice (see also spelling differences), to distinguish it from similar confectionery varieties that are not flavoured with liquorice extract, and commonly manufactured in the form of chewy ropes or tubes. Most popular in the United Kingdom are liquorice allsorts. Dutch and Nordic liquorice characteristically contains ammonium chloride instead of sodium chloride, prominently so in salty liquorice.
The essential ingredients of liquorice candy are liquorice extract, sugar, and a binder. The binder is typically starch/flour, gum arabic, or gelatin, or a combination thereof. Additional ingredients are extra flavouring, beeswax for a shiny surface, ammonium chloride, and molasses to give the end product the familiar black colour.[1] Ammonium chloride is mainly used in salty liquorice candy, with concentrations up to about 8 percent. However, even regular liquorice candy can contain up to 2 percent ammonium chloride, the taste of which is less prominent due to the higher sugar concentration.[2] Some liquorice candy is flavoured with anise oil instead of or in combination with liquorice root extract.[3]
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During manufacturing, the ingredients are dissolved in water and heated to 135 °C (275 °F). In order to obtain candies of the desired shapes, the liquid is poured into molds, that are created by impressing holes into a container filled with starch powder. The liquid is then dried and the resulting candies are sprayed with beeswax in order to give their surface a shiny appearance.[4]
The liquorice-root extract contains the natural sweetener glycyrrhizin, which is over 50 times sweeter than sucrose. This ingredient has various pharmaceutical properties, the most important ones being that it acts as an expectorant (facilitating removal of mucus from the lungs by coughing) and that it increases blood pressure. The latter effect can become significant with a daily consumption of 50 g or more of liquorice candy for as little as two weeks.[5]
Liquorice is also a mild laxative, and has several varied uses in herbal medicine.
Alexander the Great supplied his troops with rations of liquorice root whilst marching, due to its thirst quenching qualities.[6]
An excessive amount of black licorice consumption can cause a chloride-resistant metabolic alkalosis.
In Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom and the United States, there is also a product known as red liquorice, which is extruded in a way to resemble liquorice, but is made with strawberry, cherry, raspberry, or cinnamon flavourings as the main flavourings rather than liquorice. More recently similar products have been introduced in a wider variety of flavours including apple, mango, blackcurrant, and watermelon, among others. Twizzlers (by Hersheys) and Red Vines are the most well known product brands of this type in the United States; in Australia these are produced by Darrell Lea and several other companies. While the common name for this candy has now become "red liquorice", or often simply "liquorice", this candy has little connection to actual liquorice root in flavour. The term "black liquorice" (or "black licorice") would formerly have been redundant and has become a retronym in North America.